Laurence Hope
| birth_place = Stoke Bishop, Gloucestershire, England | death_date = October | death_place = Madras, India | occupation = Poet | spouse = Malcolm Hassels Nicolson | parents = Arthur Cory (father), Fanny Elizabeth Griffin (mother) | children = }} Laurence Hope was the pen name of Adela Florence Nicolson, an Anglo-Indian poet. Life Hope was born Adela Florence Cory at Stoke Bishop, Gloucestershire, the second of three daughters to Colonel Arthur Cory and Fanny Elizabeth Griffin. Her father was employed in the British army at Lahore, and thus she was raised by her relatives back in England. She left for India in 1881 to join her father. Her father was editor of the Lahore arm of The Civil and Military Gazette, and it was he who in all probability gave Rudyard Kipling (a contemporary of his daughter) his first employment as a journalist. Her sisters Annie Sophie Cory and Isabel Cory also pursued writing careers: Annie wrote popular, racy novels under the pseudonym "Victoria Cross," while Isabel assisted and then succeeded their father as editor of the Sind Gazette. Adela married Colonel Malcolm Hassels Nicolson, who was then twice her age and commandant of the 3rd Baluchi Regiment in April 1889. A talented linguist, he introduced her to his love of India and native customs and food, which she began to share. This widely gave the couple a reputation for being eccentric. They lived in Mhow for nearly ten years. After he died in a prostate operation, Adela, who had been prone to depression since childhood, committed suicide by poisoning herself and died at the age of 39 on 4 October 1904 in Madras. Her son Malcolm published her Selected Poems posthumously in 1922. In 1901, she published Garden of Kama, which was published a year later in America under the title India's Love Lyrics. She attempted to pass these off as translations of various poets, but this claim soon fell under suspicion. Somerset Maugham published a story called The Colonel's Lady loosely based on the ensuing scandal. Her poems often used imagery and symbols from the poets of the North-West Frontier of India and the Sufi poets of Persia. She was among the most popular romantic poets of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Her poems are typically about unrequited love and loss and often, the death that followed such an unhappy state of affairs. Many of them have an air of autobiography or confession. Details on her life are not easy to find due to her relative lack of letters, but Lesley Blanch in her book, Under A Lilac-Bleeding Star, included some biographical information that drew on unpublished memoirs written by her son. In Diaries and Letters from India, Violet Jacob provided some information about the Nicolsons and their milieu, although most of what is known of Violet, as she came to be known, had to be gleaned through her poetry. Writing It is tempting to read much of her own life into her poems, but one must be careful in doing this; yet her dedication to her husband in the following verse, written shortly before her suicide, makes it hard to avoid: I, who of lighter love wrote many a verse, Made public never words inspired by thee, Lest strangers' lips should carelessly rehearse Things that were sacred and too dear to me. Thy soul was noble; through these fifteen years Mine eyes familiar, found no fleck nor flaw, Stern to thyself, thy comrades' faults and fears Proved generosity thine only law. Small joy was I to thee; before we met Sorrow had left thee all too sad to save. Useless my love----as vain as this regret That pours my hopeless life across thy grave. Recognition Her poetry was extremely popular during the Edwardian period, being hailed by such poets as Thomas Hardy, and having two films as well as some musical adaptions of her poetry made, but since then her reputation has faded into near-obscurity. British composer Amy Woodforde-Finden set four of her lyrics from The Garden of Kama to music, the most popular of which was Kashmiri Song; and after these proved a critical success, set four more lyrics from Stars of the Desert (published in 1903) to music as well. Publications * The Garden of Kama and other love lyrics from India. London: William Heinemann, 1902 1901. ** Also India's Love Lyrics, including The Garden of Kama. New York: John Lane, 1901; New York: Dodd Mead, 1906; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969. * Stars of the Desert. 1903; New York: John Lane, 1914; London: William Heinemann, 1920. * Last Poems: Translations from the book of Indian love. 1905; New York: John Lane, 1905; New York: Dodd, Mead, 1905. ** Also Indian Love. London: William Heinemann, 1905. * Laurence Hope's Poems. New York: Paul R. Reynolds, 1907. * Selected Poems from The Indian Love Lyrics of Laurence Hope (edited by son, M.M. Nicolson). London: William Heinemann, 1922. *''Complete Love Lyrics, including India's love lyrics, Stars of the desert, Last poems''. New YorK: Dodd Mead, 1937; Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing, 1942. *''Indian Love Songs''. New Delhi, India: Indigo, 2004. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat..Search results = au:Laurence Hope, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, July 26, 2013. See also * List of British poets * List of Indian poets writing in English References * Bickley, Francis L. and Sayoni Basu, "Nicolson nee Cory, Adela Florence pseud. Laurence Hope (1865-1904)," Dictionary of National Biography 2004. * Blanch, Lesley. "Laurence Hope--A Shadow in the Sunlight." Under a Lilac-Bleeding Star: Travels and Travelers. London: John Murray, 1963: 184-208. * Carter, Jennifer. "Love Among the Lotuses," NLA News (National Library of Australia) 12:2 (November 2001). * Jealous, John. "'Laurence Hope' (1865-1904)." The 1890s: An Encyclopedia of British Literature, Art, and Culture. New York: Garland, 1993. 283-84. * Marx, Edward, "Violet (Adela Florence) Nicolson." Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. Ed. Paul Schlueter and June Schlueter. New York: Garland, 1999. 476-77. * Marx, Edward. "'Laurence Hope' (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)." Late Nineteenth- And Early Twentieth-Century British Women Poets (Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 240). Ed. William Thesing. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. 88-93. * Marx, Edward. “Reviving Laurence Hope.” Women's Poetry, Late Romantic to Late Victorian: Gender and Genre. Ed. Isobel Armstrong and Virginia Blain. London; New York: Macmillan Press, 1998. Catalog listing * Marx, Edward. "Decadent Exoticism and the Woman Poet." Women and British Aestheticism. Ed. Kathy Psomiades and Talia Schaffer. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia , 2000. * Marx, Edward. "The Exotic Transgressions of 'Laurence Hope'," in The Idea of a Colony: Cross-Culturalism in Modern Poetry. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. * Roy, Anindyo. "'Gold and Bracelet, Water and Wave': Signature and Translation in the Indian Poetry of Adela Cory Nicolson," Women: a cultural review 13.2 (2002): 145-68. Notes External links ;Poems *Selected Poetry of Adela Florence Nicolson Cory (1865-1904) (4 poems) at Representative Poetry Online. *Laurence Hope 1865-1904 at the Poetry Foundation. *Laurence Hope poems on Poetry Archive *Laurence Hope at PoemHunter (133 poems). *Poems by Laurence Hope ;Books * *Laurence Hope bibliography ;About *Edward Marx's Laurence Hope Page * * Category:1865 births Category:1904 deaths Category:Women poets Category:English poets Category:English women writers Category:British writers Category:Indian writers Category:Indian women writers Category:Writers who committed suicide Category:Suicides in India Category:19th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Poets who committed suicide